Chapter 2, A Family Affair Summary and Analysis

Chapter Two is Xaviera's account of her childhood years through the time she left Holland. She is born in Indonesia to a Dutch father and German/French mother. The Japanese invade the island on which the family lives and they are thrown into a concentration camp due to Xaviera's father's Jewish background. Xaviera and her mother are released after three years, but Xaviera's father is kept until the end of the war. He serves as a doctor in the camp while being held there and once treats Xaviera for a deep cut, not knowing she is his daughter. After the whole family is freed, they return to Amsterdam and her father rebuilds his medical practice.

During this period of Xaviera's childhood, an incident stands out in her memory from when she is about eleven years...